In an apparent attempt to “sex up” a news programme, the TV station has been caught passing off footage from the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster Titanic as a real life report on the Kremlin’s recent attempt to stake its claim to the riches of the Arctic Ocean.
Rossiya’s images were distributed all over the world, appearing on television news broadcasts and websites in Britain and as “screen grabs” in newspapers.

It took an alert teenager in Finland with a Titanic DVD to spot the sham. Waltteri Seretin, 13, from Kemi, 450 miles north of Helsinki, recognised the images in the national daily Ilta-Sanomat.

“I was looking at the photo of the Russian sub expedition and I noticed immediately that there was something familiar about the picture,” he told the paper. “I checked it with my DVD and there it was right there in the beginning of the movie: exactly the same image of the submer-sibles approaching the ship.”

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Russia’s dive in two mini subs last week was trumpeted by Moscow as a PR coup in its effort to prove the Arctic is Russian. Veteran explorer Artur Chilingarov and his team returned to a heroes’ welcome.

The TV fiasco will add fresh controversy to the expedition, which caused scorn and resentment among other northern hemisphere nations bent on getting their share of the Arctic’s energy riches – at least 10bn tonnes of hydrocarbons.

Alexei Simonov of the Glasnost Defence Foundation, said there had been a clear attempt by the Russian channel to dupe viewers: “This is a sign of the sheer unprofessionalism that reigns when TV is turned into a pawn of the authorities.”

LONDON – A North Sea fisherman has netted a gruesome catch: a piece of skull belonging to his missing friend.

Barry Hunter picked the skull fragment out of his net in December while trawling near the mouth of the River Tyne, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) north of London, Northumbria police said in a statement.

Hunter turned the bone over to authorities, and forensic tests confirmed that it belonged to Brian Allison, one of two fellow fishermen who disappeared when their trawler sank during rough weather in the area on Nov. 17, 2004.

The sea, a thing of infinite mystery, was up to its mysterious ways today on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

At high noon, in the middle of low tide, two large pieces of a wrecked 19th century clipper ship decided to poke out above the sand and reveal their long-hidden selves to the world.

It was a little piece of maritime history and a great big puzzle. Just the thing for a beachcomber to ponder on a warm and sunny spring day, instead of going to work.

“I don’t know what happened here, but it’s interesting,” said lifeguard Sean Scallan, who got out of his dune buggie to check the wreckage, all the while keeping an eye on the nearby swimmers, that being what lifeguards do.

…a historian for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area said the wreckage was surely that of the three-masted clipper ship King Philip, which was built in Maine in 1856. According to the records, which are frequently less romantic than the speculation, she spent much of her career carrying bird manure fertilizer around the world. In her last years, she carried lumber from the Pacific Northwest to San Francisco.On Jan. 25, 1878, she was towed by a tug through the Golden Gate, then laid anchor to allow the tug to assist a nearby vessel in distress, according to historian Stephen Haller. The anchor didn’t hold, however, and the King Philip drifted onto the sand at Ocean Beach, where she foundered.

…The King Philip made a brief appearance in 1980, Haller said, when El Niño currents washed away an unusually large amount of sand. But no one had seen the ship since.

And the sea being the fickle creature she is, she may be gone again at any moment. So, Haller said, better go visit soon. And don’t disturb anything, he said, because it’s not respectful and anyway there’s no buried treasure.

“It’s kind of comforting to see the King Philip again,” Haller said. “It reminds you that the sea is a dangerous place and very unforgiving of human error.” – SFGate

I thought that lime only went with Corona…Not Rainier. But I’m sure NOTHING you put with this cerveza will erase the “skunky.” Self respecting Pirates I’m sure would order up something else.

Buoys to mark 1899 shipwreck including Rainier beer bottles

More than 107 years after fire ravaged its masts and deck, the Hera’s hull and some of its cargo – including hundreds of bottles of Rainier beer – remain intact.

…Built in 1869, the Hera, a three-mast schooner, spent its first 30 years sailing between San Francisco and Australia; San Francisco and Portland, Ore.; and fishing for cod in the Bering Sea.

It departed Seattle for Honolulu in 1899 loaded with grain, the pianos, 1,800 barrels of lime, a knocked-down school house and 60,000 quart bottles of the Seattle Malting and Brewing Company’s Rainier beer. – Seattle PI